[2 V-day fics] "Roses are White" and "Bell the Cat"
More VD fics, more VD drabbles! ...that's VD as in Valentine's Day. OR IS IT!

Video Game drabble time.

Roses Are White
SaGa Frontier
Asellus/White Rose
Femslash. ...is it slash if it's canon? Anyway. Spoilers for the half-mystic ending, I guess, but not much. I mean, it's not like the game GIVES us anything to do with them, much, in the ending.


Asellus isn't even sure how much time has passed any more. It's as nothing to her -- oh, the time passes at a reasonable rate, but day follows day follows day with nothing like aging to mark it. It's blinding, dizzying.

And she refuses to return to Facinaturu.

Rastaban seems fine with this state of affairs; when Ildon protested that Facinaturu needs a Mystic Lord to rule it, Rastaban had waved him into silence, bowed, kissed her hand.

"You are the Charm Lord," Rastaban had whispered. "If you choose to wander, that's your choice to make."

He'd obviously wanted to be regent and, honestly, there was no reason for him not to be; she put him on the throne and left. He couldn't control the realm, couldn't rule the realm -- not as a Noble Mystic only and unable to ever be Lord; his bloodlines won't allow it -- but he'd be content enough to give orders as if he were more. If she is lucky, she won't even have to deal with a coup when -- if -- she comes back.

It takes her a long time until she is able to open the Dark Labyrinth and free White Rose.

The place was designed to not let out the prey it had captured -- not without leaving someone behind there instead. It took learning all forms of magic she could master, and from the inside. It took Mystic skills her half-human body wasn't able to handle until she trained it to endure the pain. It took learning to grasp the strands of magic, rip them apart, put them together into new forms.

And she holds now the gates in her hands and rips them open.

There is nobody in sight, and even with this new power she cannot risk entering, so she stays there, arms shaking as she holds space open. "White Rose!" she calls. "White Rose!"

And slowly, White Rose comes.

All of the roses have wilted from her hair over the years, and it's hard to recognize the White Rose that Asellus had known, thin-faced and pale behind stringy dark ringlets, her lips bloodless, her eyes wide and full of hope.

It's the eyes that identify her in the end, bright with recognition and love.

"White Rose," Asellus whispers, and touches one cheekbone, sharp enough to cut.

"Asellus," White Rose says in a voice harsh from disuse, lips cracking blue as she smiles, the expression brilliant and beatific. "I knew you'd come."


***

Bell the Cat
Vagrant Story
Sydney/Ashley
NOT safe for work. Bloodplay, m/m sexual content. Spoilers for the end of game.


Though Sydney can walk as silently as the dead when he wants to, Ashley has learned the little hints to hear him coming -- the click click of metal carefully kept from ringing. The soft sound of leather on leather. The way snowflies would begin to thicken.

He rose before Sydney had crossed the room to him and, without turning, asked: "What do you want?"

"You're an awfully aggressive man, Riskbreaker, when you're angry." Sydney's voice is calm, and Ashley does finally turn. Sydney stands there, pale and centred, his metal arms and their deadly claws tucked away behind himself.

"Everything's changed," Ashley says, bitter, and it has.

For some reason, he thought it would end with the duke -- even after the Rood Inverse, burned into his back, had told him otherwise. He thought they would escape the collapsing gate of Lea Monde, thought they would go, let the duke die, end all of Syndey's obligations, and somehow, life would resume.

Instead, the dead gather at the corners of his eyes wherever he goes. They make it from town to town on foot and he hears whispers from the trees, people watching his back with greedy eyes. Witnesses of things they can't let go of. Sydney is intrigued by this behaviour -- he never really saw the dead, he claims, he just heard them constantly. Ashley cannot make out what they say, but he sees them. He thinks his must be worse, but he knows he can't know.

"Everything's changed," Sydney agrees, and Ashley frowns at him, severely. He doesn't even know if Sydney's still alive or not. He sees Sydney too clearly -- and if he hears Sydney well also, he cannot know if that's Sydney's ability or his own.

They're staying in a destroyed library for now. A fire had burned most of it down; the books flicker in and out of existence to Ashley's eyes. They are not disturbed here. "Is that all you have to say?"

"Relax," Sydney tells him. He goes over, sighs, places two hands against Ashley's chest. They should be setting all of his instincts off: not safe to have ten crooked-bladed knives placed on one's chest. But they don't. They can't. He can hurt but he cannot die, now. And he has always hurt.

"Who could relax in a situation like this?"

Sydney's lips tighten. "Relax," he orders again, unused to being disobeyed for any reason, and if there's a thread of Power, of the Dark in his voice -- well, Ashley can deflect it with a thought and does.

"Nobody asked me," Ashley tells him, and closes his hands around Sydney's wrists.

One eyebrow lifts, Sydney's expression entirely unimpressed. "Poor Ashley Riot," he says, blandly. "Shall I call your mother to come kiss it better?"

It's long practice that lets him choke the rage back, hide it behind careless disregard. "Why do you follow me?"

Sydney does not answer that. Instead, he curls his fingers, draws blood as his claws dig into Ashley's chest. It hurts, and Ashley's lips draw back from his teeth, but it is no danger. No danger at all.

He leans down and claims Sydney's mouth.

It's not lovemaking, not like he remembers with (someone else's) Tia, but it never is with them. They do this every so often when words fail. Ashley wants to blame the death following them, the fact it convinces him, for a few minutes, that Sydney is alive.

Though at the same time, when he does this -- pins Sydney back to the floor, Sydney's claws raking him so that Sydney is slick with Ashley's blood, so that Sydney's pale chest and hair and lips are all soaked and smeared and lost -- he suspects that he's proved to himself that Sydney is dead. If Sydney were alive, he'd still bear the Rood. If Sydney were alive, he'd brush aside Ashley's strength as if it were nothing, fade away, teleport, return to mock him with words that cut like glass, or metal.

Sydney is silent in this, but his emotions are written clear on his features, tight and almost surprised, constantly surprised, his eyes closed and his mouth open just a little, blood in the corner of his mouth, dotting him where Ashley's dripped on him. But if Sydney were dead, he could hardly hold Ashley's blood.

Ashley closes his eyes, moves, moves, moves, and grits his teeth through the momentary rushing blindness before sound rushes in and he relaxes, breathes roughly, tastes his own sweat and blood in the salt of the air.

By the time he's recovered himself enough to open his eyes again, Sydney's spent, and he cannot remember when Sydney came, if at all. But the expression on his face has softened into its usual ice-cool calmness, an almost imperceptible smile lingering on his face like he has barely worn since he said farewell to the Duke.

Ashley sighs as his wounds knit up, as his blood evaporates, and he pushes Sydney's hair back from his face with one hand. "Why do you follow me?" he asks.

There is something almost gentle in Sydney's touch as he reaches, draws a razor-tipped finger down the line of Ashley's cheekbone, lightly enough that Ashley cannot tell if he's drawn blood or not.

"Why," Sydney murmurs, answering with a question as he's wont to do, "will you not let me go?"